Welcome

Future Museum is built around the key areas that make the south-west so distinctive from the rest of Scotland – its people, industries and arts.
The website provides free access to the museum collections of Ayrshire and Dumfries & Galloway and creates a valuable resource for people of all ages.

Today's Objects

Collection Focus

Kilmarnock to Troon Railway

Something quite extraordinary was happening in Kilmarnock
in the early years of the 19th Century. It was an engineering
project on, for the time, a massive scale. Between 1808 and 1812 a
railway was constructed to take coal and minerals from Kilmarnock
to the harbour at Troon. It was also used to carry passengers, from
June 27, 1812. There had been short pit railways before and a few
wagon ways, but nothing as ambitious as the Kilmarnock and Troon
Railway. It was a bold and imaginative step.